


maybe then

by HerDiamonds



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: TW: Suicide, y’all im very sorry about this one...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28872060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerDiamonds/pseuds/HerDiamonds
Summary: Meredith remembers she doesn’t need to ask if Jo was happy about this or not, or if she needed told hold her hand for an appointment and drive her home later that day because this…this made Jo so unbelievably happy she could see it from a mile away.She remembers all the good and happiness happening for Jo, surprisingly.She just doesn’t remember where it all went so wrong.
Relationships: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 22





	maybe then

**Author's Note:**

> this is dedicated to the group chat. I love you all. twas nice knowing y’all…
> 
> TW: mentions of suicide and death

Meredith remembers the days very clearly.

The dreary day someone was knocking so frantically on her door close to midnight already, and she hurried down the stairs in hopes to answer the door, yell at her visitor, and pray her children wouldn’t wake up.

She just wasn’t expecting to see Jo on the other side of the door, brown paper bag clutched in her hand so tightly and rain making her hair stick to her face.

“Let me in, it’s freezing!” She remembers the demand and the slight panic in her voice.

“Jo! It’s midnight, what are you doing?”

Jo doesn’t give her an answer, just shoves the soggy paper bag towards the blonde and she takes it, peaking inside and examining the contents before looking back up at her.

“Okay, so, here.” She says, shoving the bag back towards Jo.

The brunette takes it but stands there, frozen, unmoving, entranced, staring down at the bag in her hands.

“Go take the tests.” Meredith pushes, giving her a nudge towards the bathroom.

She remembers the agonizing moments she spent waiting with Jo before the ever so small smile creeps across the younger woman’s face as all five tests show the same identical answers.

Meredith remembers she doesn’t need to ask if Jo was happy about this or not, or if she needed told hold her hand for an appointment and drive her home later that day because this _…_ this made Jo so unbelievably happy she could see it from a mile away.

She remembers the warm hug Jo gives her because the woman had just been shivering cold from the rain just moments ago and she thought it was contradictory. She remembers the joyous and happy tears falling from big brown eyes amidst a bit of sorrow and pain, grieving the loss of their best friend for not getting to experience this, yet the wave of mutual understanding in them both when she’d asked her to not tell Alex.

She remembers how Jo thanked her for giving her the benefit of the doubt, even with such loyalty to Alex, but by now, she thinks Jo had earned it. After all, she remembers her own pain and betrayal she felt from the man. Jo deserved someone on her side, in her corner for once.

She remembers the days and weeks and months of prepping the loft with Jo. Helping her go through old bins and boxes of leftover baby things Amelia and Link hadn’t wanted, helping bring them over to the loft.

She remembers the happiness on Jo’s face, the complete awe in her eyes as they picked out countless outfits for the new little boy who’d soon be making his presence in the upcoming months.

The long days she spent in the OR with Jo, chatting and discussing names for the little boy, sharing Zola, Bailey and Ellis’s suggestions for their newest cousin to be. The few moments she got to spend next to Jo’s side as they watched Carina perform ultrasounds as the little boy grew.

Meredith remembers all the good and happiness happening for Jo, surprisingly.

She just doesn’t remember where it all went so wrong.

______________________________

Everything had been a blur since he’d gotten the phone call. Everything felt numb. He barely registered the voice on the other end of the line, the entire three and a half hour flight, the cab ride from the airport to the once familiar hospital.

The only thing constant was the shaking of his hands, the racing in his heart, the sheer panic written all over his face at the prospect of something being wrong, so utterly and completely wrong.

The call came, interrupting his surgery.

_Meredith._

He ignored it at first. But then she called again,

and again,

and _again._

And his blood ran cold.

She hadn’t called in so long. It had been months since he’d sent the letters. Months of utter silence, cut off from everything, _everyone._ So initially, he was already on edge before he’d even instructed one of the scrubs nurses to hold the phone to his ear.

In the many years he’d been a surgeon, never had he passed over the rest of the procedure onto a resident and left his OR. Not once, until that phone call.

Not once until he heard Meredith’s voice on the other line. In a tone that made his body run rigid cold and sent shivers down his spine.

In a tone he prays he never has to hear again.

“It’s Jo.” Is all she says, all she has to say to flip his whole world upside-down. Nothing else mattered in that moment. No one else.

He leaves the hospital after that, in the middle of his shift, not really caring about the people yelling for him as he’s ripping his scrub gown off and throwing it aside. He yanks his scrub cap off and pockets it before he's running.

He’s running down the halls of his hospital as his chest pounds. He makes sure to grab his keys from his office before he’s out the front doors of the hospital and heading for his car.

It takes him a little under an agonizing hour before he’s pulling up to the airport, slamming his car in park and tearing out of his car, frantically running towards the front of the airport.

He’s yelling. He knows he’s yelling but he can’t even hear himself, because everything feels so numb.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong, and he wasn't there.

He just needed to be there. 

He needed to get there soon.

The flight to Seattle had him completely dazed.

They’d called his boarding number and it was all he could do to sit in silence for three and a half hours. Three and a half hours of hell.

The stewardess came and went and he ignored her. The lady in the row across from him had attempted to hit on him and the dude next to him was trying to chat with him, but Alex ignored them all. He didn’t want to talk. He couldn’t. He needed to focus.

He needed to focus, to get to Seattle, and to find out what happened that Meredith wouldn’t tell him.

______________________________

The hospital feels horrifying.

He’d walked these halls for years.

He’d been shot in these halls.

He’d been married in these halls.

He’d fallen in love with the love of his life in these halls.

It had never felt this terrifying, ever.

Not until now.

It makes his skin crawl, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, chills shiver down his spine, his blood run cold.

Something had happened.

Something had happened and he didn't know, but he needed to.

Meredith finally pulls him out of his reverie

He’s just not sure if he’s relieved to see her.

______________________________

She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to start.

They teach you a lot of things in med school. She learned a lot there. She learned a lot as an intern, and then a resident and hell even as an attending, chief of her department, she was still learning. She’d taught interns something similar to this, even. 

She just never learned how to do _this._

No one teaches how to tell a loved one about their loved one.

She never learned this, nor would she want to.

Taking a deep breath, she leads Alex into a private room, encouraging him to sit down.

That was the first step; _location._

“Mer, what’s going on? Will you just tell me? I need to know what happened. No beating around the bush or half-truths, I wanna know– _need_ to know.”

“She had a baby, your baby.” She clarifies, because language– _step two_ –was important. It makes her smile a bit. She’d been there right beside Jo. She got to hold him right after he was born, too. He was beautiful. “A little boy–“ she doesn’t get to finish before Alex is on his feet and interrupting her.

“Oh God, Meredith. God, you scared the crap out of me! I thought someone had died. This is a good thing. I mean it’s awful because I haven’t been here. I guess Jo told you you couldn’t tell me or whatever because why wouldn’t she tell me I have another kid?” He rambles on, pacing around and completely ignoring Meredith’s expression. "We have a son? Where is he? I need to see him. Where’s Jo? Is she okay?”His voice becomes frantic the longer she stays silent, the longer she remains still, sitting in the chair that was beside his.

“She had him two weeks ago.” She swallows the lump in her throat as her voice grows shaky. “Alex, I’m sorry, he didn’t make it–“

“Why didn’t you call? Why wasn’t I called? Who was her OB? Did Robbins get notified? Could she have helped? Tell me what happened!”

He’s yelling now. And she should be used to it, patients’ families yelling, screaming, shouting, crying as they begin to process and grieve.

But it only scares her, watching the man she called her best friend, her person, begin to grieve over a child he never knew he had, a child he never got to love, a child he should’ve been there for, to see, to hold.

“There was nothing anyone could do. Jo had developed placental abruption and it wasn’t caught. It was missed and went untreated. You of all people know how it can just start. She had some spotting in her second trimester and then it had stopped. Carina said that there was nothing to worry about, and Jo even called Robbins to confirm. She was okay _._ ” Meredith tells. “And then she wasn’t. She was thirty-one weeks when an intern accidentally shoved a gurney a little harder than necessary, and it bumped into her. It wasn’t much, she didn’t even stumble, but apparently the force of it caused her placenta to detach. She started uncontrollably bleeding. There–there was so much blood.”

She watches the tears fall from Alex’s face as he buries his head in his hands, his whole body shaking.

“Carina took her up and was on the phone with Arizona the entire time. Robbins was still six hours out so she was talking Carina through the surgery, except it was already too late. The baby wasn't breathing when he was born. He’d been deprived of oxygen for too long at that point and everything was too late. So they were able to close Jo up and she got to see him, I got to see him too. He was beautiful Alex. All Karev, that one. His head’s big like yours. He had her nose, though.” She smiles through her own tears at that point. Sharing every detail she remembered of the little boy. “She held him. He was cold, and pale, and blue, but he was still so beautiful.”

“No. No this isn’t happening. You’re lying, Mer, why would you do this to me? Why would you say crap like this?”

She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t know what else to say. Sorry doesn’t help. Sorry doesn’t fix this, fix the fact that their baby, a baby he never knew existed, would never get to grow up, and to have to explain that it just happened sometimes. That there really wasn’t a full explanation as to how it even happened, it just did. She knows that doesn’t give him much closure and it never will.

“So Jo’s okay? Where is she, the loft? Your house? I need to see her. You–you know how fragile she must be right now. Someone needs to be with her.” He’s up on his feet again, pacing around and she’s afraid his walking in circles is going to make her sick.

“Jo went home after her c-section. Link and I did our best to empty the loft of all the baby things. His nursery in the corner of the loft,where your heavy bag used to be, had been almost completely finished. She’d put his clothes in the dresser and set up a baby bath in the bathroom. There was a crib and a changing table and a bouncer, the stroller, the carseat, the toys, even a rocking chair. Your mom had even sent some hand-knitted blankets, hats, booties, Alex, they were adorable. I’d never seen Jo so happy and excited. She was ready. She was sad you weren’t there with her, but she was so happy and ready for that little boy.”

Hesitating for a moment, Meredith shoves her hands in her scrub pockets and then pulls them out as her hand falls on something. She glances at the piece of paper in her hands and then hands it to Alex.

He stares, with tears in his eyes, at the grainy ultrasound photo, one of the last ones taken before Jo’s emergency c-section.

“I’ve never seen someone so ready for a baby, but Jo was. She had this ultrasound picture hanging on the fridge. I forgot I’d shoved it into my pocket.” She says the last part quieter, but Alex still catches it, making eye contact and urging her to continue, knowing she hadn’t told the full story quite yet.

“She was happy, until her world came crashing down on her. And then everything was dark. She refused tp willingly check herself into inpatient care this time, and I’m not married to her so I couldn't do it. Link isn’t legally her brother, so we were out of options–”

“You called me here to send her to psych?” Alex asks in disbelief.

“No.” Meredith says softly as the tears well up in her eyes again. “Jo doesn’t need to be admitted to psych because she’s dead.”

And with that, Alex’s whole world seems to completely shatter.

“She’d tucked away a few ultrasound photos and some letters she’d written to you and never sent. Link and I must’ve missed them because when I came back to the loft this morning, there she was, curled up in one of your worn out t-shirts, clutching his baby blanket, and the letters were next to her. She wasn’t breathing when I came in. Her pain medication from her surgery was completely gone, but the bottle was on the nightstand and there was an empty bottle of tequila next to it too.”

Alex gets up, throwing the chair he was sitting in, across the room in anger. “Why wasn’t someone with her?! You knew she shouldn’t have been alone! I should’ve been there! You should’ve called me!” He screamed.

“There was a mass casualty last night, a huge nineteen car pile up on the main highway, and all traumas were headed our way. It was all hands on deck and no one could be there with her. She said she would be okay. It was the middle of the night. I even waited until she’d fallen asleep before I left.” She explained but she knew nothing she said would help. Nothing she said would fix it. Nothing she said would make Alex feel better.

So, he continued to scream, and yell, and throw things. He punched the wall until his hand was bloody and bruised and there was an Alex Karev’s fist size hole in the wall, but he didn’t care. Nothing he could possibly do would bring Jo back to him. Nothing he did would bring the love of his life back to him.

And he’d never forgive himself for leaving her in the first place. Because maybe then he could’ve been there. Maybe then he could’ve saved her. Maybe then they’d both be alive. Maybe then he’d have never lost the love of his life completely.

Maybe then he wouldn’t hate himself as much as he did now, and forever.

______________________________

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know what happened… I just needed to get this out. 
> 
> if you’re going to yell at me, go ahead I know I deserve it. im ready.


End file.
